The Origins of Spanish Colonialism in Morocco, 1859-62

This book investigates the beginnings of Spanish colonialism in Morocco in the mid-nineteenth century, focusing on the Spanish invasion of northern Morocco and the twenty-seven-month occupation of the city of Tetouan from 1859 to 1862. By homing in on specific events, scenes, and records, the book reveals both the micro-processes of everyday life and the larger systems of beliefs, values, and representations informing them. It scrutinises the contours of the incipient Hispano-Moroccan modern colonial formation by recourse to comparative analysis of dynamics across the Islamicate, Mediterranean, and Atlantic worlds, while also emphasising the importance of local notions, spaces, and peoples in the modelling of colonial epistemologies and practices. The author adopts different disciplinary approaches, questions the dominant modes of historical knowledge production, and explores colonial power from a feminist intersectional perspective, thus acknowledging the polysemic nature of colonial rule for different historical subjects –including the lower-class and female subalterns.

Itzea Goikolea-Amiano is an independent scholar, having previously obtained her PhD in History and Civilisation at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She was a postdoctoral fellow at SOAS University of London, UK, from 2017 to 2021, and IMF-CSIC in Barcelona, Spain, from 2022 to 2023. Currently, Itzea is a Basque language teacher at the Spanish Official Language School in Barcelona.